Yuri Kochiyama

People have a right to violence, to rebel, to fight back.

I didn't wake up and decide to become an activist. But you couldn't help notice the inequities, the injustices. It was all around you.

I lived in San Pedro, California, which is, you know, on the west side of California, and it's where many, many Japanese lived.

I tell you, in this country, you don't get much of an education. Throughout high school, through junior college, which is all I went, I didn't know anything about the annihilation of all the Indian nations that were here.

Projects meant living with blacks and Puerto Ricans, but that's what we wanted. Living in the projects, we've met so many wonderful, wonderful people.

When you're in a black group, you have to keep in mind you're not black. You just have to be sensitive. We have to be appreciative that the black nationalist struggle is a nationalist struggle.